If you asked me during the first Tough Mudder I took part in, if I'd be running the event for a tenth time, I'd have probably said, you must be kidding, given that it was a horrible experience but here I am nine events later and I've decided that this would be a good weekend to do the double and run the course on both Saturday and Sunday, I only remembered how tough the course was last year after I'd entered for both events. I've just about recovered from my previous event, though I'm finding any exercise I've done in the last couple of weeks to be really tiring, so it should interesting to see if I make it round the course on the Sunday in less than eight hours. Based on the course map, they've changed the direction of the course over the bracken, so that should be interesting to see how difficult that will be.
I Got to Skipton for an nice and early time and waited for the bus which didn't take long to arrive and I got onto the site via a back entrance, quickly changing and after applying some face paint and spiking my hair. I got my bag stowed at the bag drop then getting myself into a starting wave, thankfully managing to miss the warm up scream in someone's face bit.
I started off and hoped that I wouldn't be too worn out, which aside from a couple of occasions wasn't the case at all. I was caught up by a couple of women who were from my neck of the woods and imparted my thoughts on the obstacles and we starting running together.
I gave a helping hand over each of the obstacles and got myself over most of them without too many problems, some of the obstacles needed a helping hand from other mudders like the haha ditch which was way too deep to get out of and some of the mud mile which was really muddy and slick.
At the mud mile which had some nicely high mud mounds I jumped into the mud and landed the arch of my foot on a large stone so that was annoying and painful though it didn't cause me too many problems.
I continued running and chatting to Tam and Lucy, when we reached walk the plank, I told them to keep going and I went back and did it again, this time doing a tuck jump into the water, which was great fun.
I managed to get over island hopping without falling in which put me in a really good frame of mind. I did have an issue with the hangover walls on the legionnaires loop which I felt a crampy twinge in my calf muscle but luckily I didn't cramp up.
After hearing about a guy who wanted to help 100 people conquer Everest, I stayed at the top and helped about 10 people over, which I felt good about doing.
After legionnaires loop, I got up to fire in your hole and talked to the guy at the top about Electroshock Therapy suggesting I might miss it when he mentioned that the spectators were ripping into those who were skipping it, so when the fella standing beside it mentioned it was only nine volts when I decided to go for it and started to make my way through, I think I got zapped and ended up on my arse, before crawling my way out avoiding being zapped again.
I met up with Tam and Lucy and congratulated both of them on managing to give each obstacle a try and for managing to best most of them, they were rightly pleased that they had done the event and would be doing it again.
I managed the course in about 4 hours which was pretty good going given how tough and muddy the course was, the weather was also perfect, not too cold and not blazing sunshine.
After the debacle of Kettering I stuck to one pint which a drank slowly rather than slamming it down and going back for more, which was the best idea given that I was running the course again the next day.
As I was stopping with my good friend Jonathan, I managed to score a lift back to Skipton where I managed to wander around slightly lost until I found a tesco and was able to get maps working. We had a quick and most delicious bite to eat before heading out to meet up with Annette for a few snifters of ale and a portion of chips on the way home.
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